the cons
- why oh WHY do you have to base every prod around industrial flybies? the btdt effect is strong with this one...
- you probably wanted some alternation with a calm soundtrack but although the track itself is nice it just doesnt fit the scenerio very well
- not sure if this is supposed to tell a story... if so i dont really get it (robot gets up, runs through the station, jumps off it to fly through some greetings and then its over?)

have a thumb for the effort and skill involved, but i prefer the other 2 demos up there in the top3 (esp. place 3).

Ok first of all this is probably the best pyrotech demo. It isn't without faults though. The modelling job is pretty great, but the colors are a tad vom-inducing and the needlessly clipping whites and strong vignetting hit my nerves. The visual quality still is mostly up to todays standards. It's also annoying though that most of the space scene is hidden behind the ugliest distortion filter ever for no reason. The music is the same cheesy fluff as in every previous prod from you that I remember. All of that is easily forgivable though if the content would be stringed together in some coherent way, but the supposed narrative makes no sense. A robot gets scanned and then runs until it sees a demo effect and jumps from high above? The visuals and direction raise a feeling that there should be some kind of story that the viewer should be able to follow, but alas it only amounts to a cheesy set of scenes without premise, tension, climax or resolution. The falling scene is pretty great though (even though the vignette makes me crazy, argh!).

The engine is pretty standard Pyrotech (I do agree with those that complain that all the demos look rather similar :-) ), but the demo has a story to it; I genuinely wanted to know what the robot was up to at every point, which is a good sign, even though it wasn't quite resolved in the end. Some of the movements (like the initial running, and the flip) looked a bit weird, but the falling scene is lovely—I especially like the shading on the robot in that one.

This was really good! The animation and sequences clearly had a lot of thought put into them. I liked the transition to circuitry, it was quite subtle. I noticed some minor rendering glitches on my HD7790, but apart from that it seemed to work perfectly.

There's no way my thumb can go anywhere but up. The sheer amount of work that has gone behind this is more than apparent. I do love the modeling and animation work and the texturing, and the robot is cute. I also love the free-falling scene through the credits (and tbh, I was expecting the robot to flip someone off on the way down =P)

However, there are some things that don't sit very well with me. The pacing of the robot running seems way off, as it puts tremendous effort to run based in its animation, but its speed is not on par with all that effort.

I feel that the total lack of transitions between scenes is destroying the flow of the demo, and it doesn't help in understanding what's going on, and what the story behind it is.

Finally the music, while being a nice track, is just sitting lazily on the background and doesn't complement the demo really well. It also doesn't draw any attention to it which would be fantastic if I play it at a lounge beach bar while having cocktails by the sea, but for the demo it's just indifferent.

Still, very thumbworthy demo, and technically an upgrade from the previous ones. Keep up guys!

Totally awesome intro (the first few seconds with the logo), downhill after that. Technically fine I guess, always nice to see attempts at character animation in demos. Style and content wise this was as far from my cup of tea as possible with the standard Guage-corridor-flybys and all. And those C64 font greetings were painfully clashing with all the preceeding visuals. Piggie for the amount of effort, cool lighting effects and that great intro sequence.

Sorry, I don't like it. For a demo with a cute robot running, it has no soul. It is as sterile/cold as the surrounding industrial setting. I don't know if it is the texturing (same problem I have with fr-trained demo).

Still better than your previous demos, you are now really the group to beat at assembly and this is the result of a lot of hard work and effort!

After watching it a couple of times I decided I really liked the music.
Story wise it is a bit hard to grasp but I think I've got it.
There is a robot who has been sleeping after watching to many demos, who is activated because the whole place is about to explode. He is obviously a defense robot with a cuter side that he discovers during the demo.
After he found out the place is not wort saving he decides to jump out of the building (which is bound to collapse) and in his flight he becomes one with the robots used by other demogroups.

I disliked the repeating textures and for example the 4th shot in the corridor scene displays a texture-mapping error on the pipe. The red texture used for the railing just doesn't seem metal. Stuff like this kinda removes the realness-factor and throws it back into a game-engine-feel.

Besides this is it is freakin' awesome because of all the work and eye for detail that went into this. I forgive you the complete lack of a narrative structure because oh shiny running/falling/jumping robots!

I do like the visuals quite, especially the little shinny robot doing animations and acrobotics in the air. But somehow, something is lacking, it's like another flyby without something special to keep me liking it enough. Thumbs up for the technical/modeling effort though.

the effort put into the significance of the greetings part should have been put into the rest of the demo as well. boring 3d "industrial" flyby with a badly animated cheesy clumsy robot. come on! there are cocoon to beat!

I really love the amount of work that went into this, but I do agree with some of the comments above. There's a lot of content but a lot of it is just slightly off. Lazy texturing, camera clipping issues, random distortions (that pixelization! why?!).

I don't think flybys are inherently bad though and the first few shots of the "outdoor" scenes are genuinely gorgeous to look at, I thought. The thing is though, if you're trying to replicate environments and graphical styles you see in AAA games nowadays you really need to be at least at that level in order to awe people.

I'm grateful for the nice comments and understanding of the criticism. I don't understand this forum of drama. This was our best demo we have done. Most work in years. I'm proud. Some comments here are just unrealistic. If we're about to continue to make any demos, this forum is the most demoralizing thing for the hobby we have.

@Codarki: Take my post as a sarcastic comment to the others here that mention something like "soul" or "feelings" which are not helpful and leave the creators at a loss as what to improve for the next production.
I intended to one-up those remarks by making mine absurd, but it seems I failed, so sorry for that.

Anyway: My thumbs up are for execution and improvements. Good work! I'd have liked to see more of a story, but one can only include so much into 5 minutes.

The sheer amount of work is obvious here, the rendering is solid (although a little hard on the eye, especially at the beginning), the modeling and animation show a lot of care, and the music is really nice. Yet there is something wrong with the direction and as a result, the demo is not engaging. It wants very much the viewer to care about the little robot, and so does the viewer, but it still feels flat and bland.

Nice one! I love it! Just do your thing with the future demos, with patiance and passion you can't make it wrong! One thing is sure: you can't give your best as long as you try to please everyone! So don't worry about the criticism. The rank of the demo itself says that this is a good, solid production!

It's quite strange how the party ranking differs from the pouet rating in your demos. Don't be unhappy. Pouet is always quite ungrateful even if someone put a lot of work into their productions. I think the general reception of your demos is pretty good. There may be just a few places to criticize but I think they are not too important. Imho the reason for the bad reception here is the disconnection from the music. It just feels imposed without having any connection to the demo. For me it's the reason why people can't feel your demo. The scenes, graphics and code here are just wonderful! Your demos are like movies and if the music would be the basement of the demo flow it would feel a lot better. That does not mean the music is bad - it just is disconnected. Still this really needs to be thumbed up. And: Do NOT stop making demos! =)

I really like Pyrotech's (recent) demos and this one is no exception. Great visuals that don't rely on distortion or glitch effects and the music, while not feeling industrial at all, still manages to tell a story in a non-dramatic way. This isn't as much an action packed demo as it is a digital fairy tale. But it is pleasant to watch. Keep up the great work!